“On the 29th of September we were startled by a tremendous bang, followed by what sounded like a succession of cannon-shots. After an interval there was another great explosion, more cannon-shots, and then a rattle of musketry. We thought at first it was some kind of plot. It turned out that a lot of trucks full of powder, unexploded shells, and small-arm ammunition had been set on fire by another train containing hay. How the hay was set on fire no one has yet found out. About 6.30 P.M. we were turned out in a great hurry, and went to the railway station, to stop all traffic in the streets in the neighbourhood, and to prevent the scum from beginning to loot; they had just begun, but they got such ‘toco’ from the ‘Tommies’ that they soon stopped their little games. We remained guarding the streets till nearly 1 A.M., when we were relieved and began, as we thought, to march home, but were grievously disappointed, as before we had gone half a mile we were halted in a square and told to lie down and go to sleep in the road. I was rather hungry, as I had not quite finished my dinner when the order to fall in came, so I managed to get a sort of penny bun from one of our captains, half of which I ate; the other half I put under my head and went to sleep on the hardest bed and strangest pillow I have ever had!”
The battalion was sent to Alexandria[251] on October 11, and a month later Lieutenant-Colonel Gregorie, after serving his full time in command, was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel R. W. E. Dawson. On February 1, 1883, the medals with clasps for Tel-el-Kebir were presented to the Royal Irish on the racecourse of Alexandria by a veteran soldier, Field-Marshal Lord Napier of Magdala, G.C.B., and a few days later the battalion, which to the great satisfaction of all ranks was not included in the 10,000 troops left to hold Egypt for the Khedive, sailed for Malta, and after remaining there for three months, landed at Plymouth at the end of May, 1883.
The regiment received permission to add to its battle honours the words “Egypt 1882” and “Tel-el-Kebir.”
Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Gregorie was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath; Major G. W. N. Rogers and Captain J. H. Daubeney each received a step in brevet rank; Quartermaster and Honorary Captain T. Hamilton was made an Honorary Major; Lieutenant A. G. Chichester and Sergeant E. O’Donnell were mentioned in despatches. The following officers were permitted to accept and wear decorations awarded by the Sultan, viz.: Lieutenant-Colonel Gregorie, the Medjidie (3rd class); Major Rogers, the Osmanieh (4th class); Captain Daubeney, Medjidie (4th class); and Lieutenant Chichester, Medjidie (5th class), and all ranks were presented by the Egyptian government with a decoration known as the Khedive’s Star.
Two officers attached to the second battalion—Captain H. H. Edwards, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and Lieutenant H. H. Drummond-Wolff, Royal Fusiliers, were also mentioned in despatches.
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE FIRST BATTALION.
1884-1885.
THE NILE EXPEDITION.
At the time of England’s armed intervention in Egypt in 1882, the Khedive’s authority extended nominally far beyond the limits of the province which Mahomet Ali had wrested from the Sublime Porte. The founder of the Egyptian dynasty, not satisfied with fighting his Suzerain the Sultan in Syria, had pushed armies up the Nile into the heart of the Soudan, or country of the Blacks, a no-man’s land which stretched from Wadi Halfa, the southern boundary of Egypt, to the Great Lakes far beyond the equator. This region had no form of government; its inhabitants were oppressed by Arab slave-hunters; its condition was pitiable in the extreme. Mahomet Ali gradually conquered every tribe in the Nile valley up to the junction of the White and Blue Niles, where he built Khartoum, and thrust forward outposts in every direction from the capital of his new dominions, which was about a thousand miles south of Cairo. The country thus annexed became known as the Egyptian Soudan, and extended from the shore of the Red Sea to the western frontier of Kordofan; it was about the size of France and Germany put together, and its population in 1883 was estimated at fourteen millions of mixed breed, the descendants of the aboriginal negroes and the Arabs who overran the country early in the Mohammedan era. This blend had produced a race possessing the outward characteristics and mental attributes of the Arab, combined with the endurance and brute courage of the Negro.[252] After anarchy such as had prevailed in the Soudan, almost any form of government might have been expected to improve the condition of the country; but in this respect Egyptian rule completely failed. Taxation was heavy; extortion was the rule, rather than the exception, and slave-hunting, with all its attendant horrors, was not suppressed; indeed, thanks to the connivance of the officials, who were virtually in partnership with the slave-dealers, it so greatly increased that the country was rapidly becoming depopulated, when in 1869, the pressure of British public opinion compelled the Khedive to institute reforms in the administration, and to appoint an Englishman, Sir Samuel Baker, as Governor-General of the Equatorial provinces, which stretched from Khartoum to the Great Lakes. Five years later Baker was succeeded by General (then Colonel) Charles George Gordon, who held the post till 1879. Though both accomplished much towards the establishment of better government and the suppression of slave-hunting, their efforts were cramped and thwarted by the officials at Cairo and at Khartoum, who were naturally disinclined to lose the enormous profits they derived from the trade in slaves. A country so mercilessly treated only needed a leader to turn upon its oppressors, and in 1881, such a leader arose in the Soudan. A prophecy had long been current among Mohammedans that about this time a “Mahdi” would appear and convert the whole world to the true faith, and of this prophecy a religious adventurer, named Mohammed Ahmed, availed himself to the uttermost. He proclaimed himself the Mahdi whose advent had been predicted, and announced that as soon as the Soudan had joined his cause he would march on Egypt, destroying all who opposed him, and convert the whole world to Islam. Such was the spiritual part of his programme, carefully prepared to rouse the fanaticism latent in every Mohammedan; the temporal advantages he offered to his followers were universal equality and community of goods. Although denounced as an impostor by the educated Mussulmans, who probably regarded his socialistic propaganda with misgivings, he rapidly gained a great following, and obtained several successes over the Egyptian garrisons, which were at this time in a wretched condition. The troops had not been paid for many months, in some cases even for years: the soldiers were undrilled, their officers incompetent to drill them: the loyalty of all ranks was as doubtful as their courage. To stiffen this unpromising material, several Englishmen in the service of Egypt were sent to Khartoum; among them was Hicks Pasha, at one time an officer in the Indian army, now the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Khedive’s troops in the Soudan.
In September, 1883, Hicks, acting under the orders of the Egyptian government, led an expedition into the depths of Kordofan, where the Mahdi had retired to organise the tribesmen, from thirty to sixty thousand strong, whom his recent victories had attracted to his standard. Hicks commanded about 11,000 weakly and ill-fed men, of whom many were so unwilling to be soldiers that to prevent desertion they had to be sent up the Nile in chains. His artillery consisted of thirty-six Krupp, Nordenfelt, and mountain guns, and his transport was supplied by six thousand horses and camels. The whole of the Egyptian troops were thoroughly out of heart; they were aware that they were about to march into a country of which little was known except that it was almost waterless, and that they would encounter hordes of desperate and ruthless fanatics. As the men filed out of Khartoum they were in floods of tears. The fate of such an army may easily be imagined: on the 5th of November it was surprised by the Mahdi with 40,000 of his followers, and cut to pieces, near El Obeid in Kordofan.[253] Hicks and the other Europeans died fighting dauntlessly to the last; the Egyptians allowed themselves to be butchered almost without resistance: three hundred were given quarter, only to become the slaves of the victors, into whose hands passed the guns, much ammunition, thousands of rifles, and all the transport animals. One man alone escaped to bring the news to Khartoum. Yet so little was the importance of the Mahdist movement appreciated by the English government that at the very time Hicks’s column was being destroyed in Kordofan, Mr Gladstone was urging the reduction of the British army of occupation in Egypt. When Hicks’s fate became known in Cairo the situation grew very complicated. The Cabinet in London, afraid of being drawn into armed intervention in the Soudan, had persistently assumed an attitude of aloofness on the subject of Hicks’s operations, and, affecting to ignore the fact that Britain was virtually, though not officially, mistress in Egypt, and that a word from her representative at Cairo, Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring), would have stopped the expedition, declined all responsibility on the ground that it had been undertaken solely on the authority of the Egyptian government. The annihilation of Hicks’s army had placed Khartoum in a position of great danger: only two thousand troops were left to man the four miles of earthworks by which the town was ringed, and its communications with Cairo and Suakim were seriously threatened. The generals in command of the British army at Cairo admitted that, if the Mahdi advanced on Khartoum, it would be impossible to hold it in its existing condition, and that in all probability the whole valley of the Nile, as far south as Wadi Halfa, would be lost to Egypt. Alarmed at the crushing blow which had befallen him, and at the consequences likely to follow it, the Khedive begged that British troops might be sent to the Soudan, or, if these should not be forthcoming, that a contingent of Turks might be imported to hold Khartoum. Our government refused to move a single soldier to the Soudan, but had no objection to the employment of a Turkish force to garrison Khartoum, provided that no expense was thereby thrown upon the Egyptian Treasury. They, however, advised Tewfik to abandon all territory south of Assouan, softening the blow by the promise that England would defend not only Egypt proper, but also the ports of the Red Sea against the Mahdists. To this wholesale dismemberment of his dominions the Khedive demurred, and again suggested a Turkish occupation of the Soudan, whereupon England sternly replied that if the Egyptian ministers would not carry out the evacuation of the Soudan they would have to make room for Englishmen, ready to enforce her policy. The Khedive thereupon withdrew his opposition, and agreed that the whole of the Soudan, except the port of Suakim, should be abandoned to its fate. During these negotiations the situation at Khartoum had become so serious that the senior European officer there, in reporting that it would be impossible to hold the town against the whole population of the Soudan, which had now thrown in its lot with the Mahdi, urged that immediate orders should be given for a withdrawal down the river. The question next arose—who was to effect the withdrawal, not only of the troops, but also of the officials, traders, and other members of the civil army of occupation in the Soudan?